Ahhh.
Television.
Everyone’s favourite box-like appendage - and thankfully for us, over the 20th century
it was one of the finest receptacles of horror going.
Do you ever remember waking up at night as a kid, stumbling downstairs - to find your
parents watching an episode of The X Files, or some detective thriller way past your bedtime?
For many of us, our first brush with horror fiction was accidental - and it’s in those
particularly horrifying episodes that we built our crypt of horror fandom upon.
Now, we’ve ventured heavily into the realms of horror cinema - but we’re yet to delve
into the abundance of horror fiction that graced our television screens over the last
century.
So, without further delay - let’s take a look, shall we?
Hello horror fans - what’s going on, and once again welcome back to the scariest channel
on YouTube - Top 5 Scary Videos.
As per usual, I’ll be your horror host Jack Finch - as today, we curiously take a look
at the Top 5 Scariest TV Horror Series Of The 20th Century.
Roll the clip.
For the curious amongst you, that clip was from the seminal Alfred Hitchcock Presents
- and while it’s a fantastic work of horror in its own right - it doesn’t *quite* hit
the mark when compared to some of the other entries on our list - but yet, it definitely
deserves an honorable mention - so, there we have it.
Also, it leads us to an important point - because, the 20th century was a long time - a hundred
years to be precise, and there’s a lot of television history to draw from and condense
into this 5 point list - and, of course - it won’t please everyone, so let us know your
picks in the comment section below.
Kicking off at Number 5 - Hammer House Of Horror
Yeah.
Exactly, and that scene was from perhaps the series best ever episode - The House That
Bled To Death.
And now, throughout this list, I’m trying to cover most decades in their fullest, and
Hammer House of Horror perhaps exemplifies early 80s British horror TV.
Although, it’s not exactly a stacked sub-genre, as most Brits were glued to Eastenders and
Coronation Street.
And sadly, Hammer House of Horror only ran for 13 episodes - but boy, were those some
damn fine episodes.
And who better to deliver it - than the legendary Hammer Films themselves, the studio responsible
for making the late Christopher Lee the horror icon that he is.
Created by Roy Skeggs, and first released on ITV on the 13th September 1980 - Hammer
House of Horror didn’t exactly do anything new, but what I did do - it did incredibly
well.
It slowly unveiled as an anthology piece, with hour long episodes that delved deep into
the supernatural - a coven of witches, cursed werewolf children, voodoo dolls and devil
worship - but it also managed to capture the more human side of horror.
The Thirteenth Reunion, tells the tale of a mysterious cult that hides it’s cannibalistic
hunger as a self-help health farm.
Yeah, that was pretty cutting stuff for the time.
Like most things Hammer Horror, this series does exactly what it says on the tin - and
it’s 80s anthology T.V at it’s finest.
And most importantly - it’s pretty damn scary stuff - even to this day.
Swinging in at Number 4 - Tales From The Crypt
And of course - you had to be expecting this one to make the list, perhaps one of the longest
running concurrent horror franchises of all time - and definitely one of the longest on
this list.
Tales From The Crypt is undeniable in its influence - and since its inception as an
EC Comics series way back in the 1950s, it’s gone on to spawn countless incarnations of
the foul-mouthed cryptkeeper and his poignant gallows humour.
First airing on June 10th 1989 - Tales From The Crypt ran all the way up until July 1996,
thanks to the production efforts of HBO.
And because of it’s placement as an original HBO series, it was one of the few anthology
horror series that pretty much had carte blanche on it’s content.
Don’t get me wrong, Tales From The Crypt had some serious bone-chilling writing attached
to it, but it’s real infamy came from the level of pure gore and graphic violence that
it so freely proliferated.
So much so, that it definitely would have never aired on any other channel at the time.
On the surface, it was the campy horror puppetry that we all knew, loved and expected - but
through each anthology episode, Tales From The Crypt truly delivered with it’s original,
horrifying premise.
Yeah, this one’s up there in the halls of horror legend.
Or the crypts of horror legend… yeah.
Definitely the crypts.
Next up at Number 3 - Twin Peaks
Ahhhhh.
Twin Peaks.
I don’t even know where to begin.
And some of you may not agree with it’s placement on this list - but I don’t care,
because in my eyes Twin Peaks is one of the most unnervingly original pieces of television
ever created.
In many ways, Twin Peaks isn’t even horror - it transcends horror, it transcends genre
- hell, it probably even transcends time, space and every other dimension after that
- in ways only that the seminal David Lynch can manage to do.
I don’t even know man.
Twin Peaks is … a detective series, maybe?
It’s a soap opera - it’s a weird, surreal, off-beat fly on the wall comedy?
Kind of?
It’s an examination of the space that lies between modern media and us as viewers?
Yeah, probably.
The thing is though - whatever Twin Peaks is, whatever ostentatious pretense that it
manages to muster in its cult fanbase, which is hard to stomach for most people - the show
itself never once fails to be interesting.
It possesses you entirely.
Who killed Laura Palmer?
And then we’re off - and we’ve got the incredible Kyle MacLachlan as Special Agent
Dale Cooper to guide us through Lynch’s bizarre, unnerving and strangely comforting
world of Twin Peaks.
There is nothing more original than Twin Peaks, whether you think it’s crap or it’s the
greatest thing ever written - and like any true horror relic, it never fails to make
you feel that weird, strange feeling in the pit of your stomach.
Yeah.
Twin Peaks everyone.
I still don’t know what it is, and I don’t think I ever will.
And I’m fine with that.
Coming in at Number 2 - The Twilight Zone
And you may be thinking - what the hell, Number 2?
But - well, trust me on Number 1.
But first, we have to herald one of the most influential horror franchises of all time,
Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone - and yes, I’m particularly zoning in on the original
series of the show that ran from 1959 to 1964 - although, despite it’s best efforts, the
1980s reboot was pretty good too.
The thing is though, the original Twilight Zone managed to exemplify something groundbreaking
in the horror genre.
It took the paranormal, the supernatural - the surreal, the fantastical and the horrifying
- blended it with science fiction - and gave it to us in neat, bite-sized narratives about
every day human life.
Hallmarked by Rod Serling himself - not an actor in any way, but an every man - and through
his mundanity, we experienced some of horror fictions most terrifying works.
The fact that this show was made in the late fifties is astounding - and it’s testament
to the fact that original writing and dedicated production can deliver a series of such high
quality that it still holds up to this day.
Episodes like It’s a Good Life and Nightmare at 20’000 Feet have been replicated time
and time again through other works of horror - for one reason - they hit the mark on so
many layers of fear that we all hold within us.
The Twilight Zone was a show for everyone - the every man, woman and child - and whether
you were 9 or 99 - each episode gave you something to take from it.
And that, is a difficult thing to do.
Cheers Rod Serling.
And finally - coming in at our Number 1 spot - The X Files
And yeah guys, if you couldn’t tell already - this list has got a pretty personal slant,
and for me - the greatest TV horror series of the 20th century was indisputably - The
X Files.
Special Agents Mulder and Scully took audiences to places that TV had never before dared to
tread - and it was in the duality of the two of them that made their paranormal excursions
so damn captivating - and more importantly, entertaining.
As the series began, Mulder was a believer of the paranormal - for him, the truth was
out there - aliens existed and the world was a lie.
For Scully, she was a skeptic - she clung to science and debunked his work.
But slowly, as the eleven seasons churned their way across the nineties and into the
new millenium, the two rapidly realised that science-fiction horror had a whole new face.
Although, technically the latter half of the series ran into the 21st century - the X Files
is quintessential 90s TV - and as was fitting fashion, it delivered us it’s terrifying
tales in a typical monster of the week fashion.
It was nothing new in terms of narrative, really - but it was the overarching storyline
that tied the whole thing together that made The X Files truly stand out from the crowd.
And not only that, those monsters of the week were some of the most terrifying creations
in horror fiction - period.
The Flukeman.
Leonard.
The Peacock Family - it was the stuff of TV nightmares - and it was only exacerbated by
the staggeringly legit physical efforts that the show managed to muster.
The merits of The X Files horror fiction can never be denied - but most importantly, it
made an entire generation of horror fans say - I Want To Believe.
Well - there we have it folks, our list for the Top 5 Scariest TV Horror Series Of The
20th Century - what do you guys think?
I know they’ll be a few recommendations for this one - so let us know your thoughts
down below, and who knows - maybe we can do a Part 2 before we move on to the 21st century.
Before we depart from today’s video though - I’d just like to address something pretty
important guys.
And firstly, I have to say that I’m sorry.
In our recent Top 5 Most Disgusting Creations In Horror Cinema video, I referred to the
legendary DAVID Cronenberg as STEVEN Cronenberg - and, I’m sorry.
That’s all there is to it.
There’s no excuse, but - sometimes in my scriptwriting, these things get jumbled up
and missed, and I didn’t catch it until afterwards.
I’m sorry David Cronenberg - and I’m sorry horror fans.
I hope you can forgive me.
On that emotional note - it’s time for me to head off - cheers for sticking around all
the way until the end.
If you were a fan of this video, or just Top 5 Scary Videos in general - then please, be
a dear and hit that thumbs up button - as well as that subscribe bell, and I’ll be
seeing you in the next one.
As per usual, I’ve been your horror host Jack Finch - you’ve been watching Top 5
Scary Videos - and until next time, you take it easy.